Unusually high sea surface temperatures off the East Coast of Australia appear to have swamped the anticipated West Pacific drought effects of the 2023-24 El Nino.

This was supposed to be a dry Summer for Australia.

The Bureau declares El Nino and positive Indian Ocean Dipole events

19/09/2023

Issued: 19 September, 2023

The Bureau of Meteorology has declared that El Niño and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) are underway. 

Warmer and drier conditions will be more likely over spring and summer for parts of Australia, under the influence of these two climate drivers.

Bureau of Meteorology Climate Manager Dr Karl Braganza said both El Niño and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) tend to draw rain away from Australia.

“Over spring, their combined impact can increase the chance of below average rainfall over much of the continent and higher temperatures across the southern two-thirds of the country,” Dr Braganza said.

“The Bureau’s three-month forecast for Australian rainfall and temperature have been indicating warm and dry conditions for some time.”

“An established El Niño and positive IOD reinforces our confidence in those predictions. Based on history, it is now also more likely that warm and dry conditions will persist over eastern Australia until autumn.”

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Read more: https://media.bom.gov.au/releases/1183/the-bureau-declares-el-nino-and-positive-indian-ocean-dipole-events/

But Summer Weather refused to go to plan;

We’re in an El Niño – so why has Australia been so wet?

Monday, 4 Dec 2023 at 03:51 pm | Source: The Conversation

Andrew King, Andrew Dowdy

After three La Niña summers many of us would have been expecting much hotter and drier conditions this spring and summer after the arrival of El Niño. Instead, in many parts of eastern Australia it’s rained and rained over the last few weeks. 

El Niño hasn’t gone away. It’s expected to continue into 2024. Why the rain? Because even with an El Niño, eastern Australia can still experience significant rain events.

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Much of eastern Australia has seen wetter than normal conditions over November. Vigorous low-pressure systems and thunderstorms brought record rain totals and flooding to parts of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

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But again, nothing is certain, as we’ve seen. Despite these two climate cycles suggesting less rain was likely, the rain returned. 

Why? One reason is the unusually high sea surface temperatures to the south and southeast of Australia, which can drive more moisture into the air and trigger more rain in the region.

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Read more: https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/news/72873-we%27re-in-an-el-niño-–%C2%A0so-why-has-australia-been-so-wet%3F

Sea surface temperatures have been unusually warm this year, which Andrew King and Andrew Dowdy admitted is one of the reasons for this year’s high rainfall, in defiance of the usual El Nino pattern. But isn’t global warming supposed to deliver unusually warm sea surface temperatures every year, in the not too distant future?

The Ocean Has a Fever

August 21, 2023

In March and April 2023, some earth scientists began to point out that average sea surface temperatures had surpassed the highest levels seen in a key data record maintained by NOAA. Months later, they remain at record levels, with global sea surface temperatures 0.99°C (1.78°F) above average in July. That was the fourth consecutive month they were at record levels.

Scientists from NASA have taken a closer look at why. “There are a lot of things that affect the world’s sea surface temperatures, but two main factors have pushed them to record heights,” said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We have an El Niño developing in the Pacific, and that’s on top of long-term global warming that has been pushing ocean temperatures steadily upward almost everywhere for a century.”

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Read more: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151743/the-ocean-has-a-fever

I guess we owe a vote of thanks to Dr. Andrew King and NASA for showing how global warming might benefit Australia, by preventing El Nino conditions from delivering devastating droughts. If only global warming was certain to continue.

Obviously there’s such a thing as too much rain, and that risk would have to be better addressed were rainfall to increase. My heart goes out to people in Townsville and elsewhere who are currently experiencing severe floods and power outages from ex-Cyclone Kirrily. We can only imagine how much their suffering might have been eased, if all the cash wasted on useless renewables had instead been spent on flood management.